intentional ammonia spike?

Lose the fish chunk, buy a fish! Also go to reefkeepers and get your cleanup crew. one fish every 10-14 days, though I recommend adding clowns at least in pairs (depending on the size of your tank.) like species and such. And carefully monitoring parameters for the next week or so as you'll see a small cycle. Parameters will go nuts each time you add a fish. But ammonia should never be allowed to hit 1 again.

 

i have had a single damsel in for 10 days, but can a fish that small put any kind of load on a 150 gallon setup?

~Will.

 

my ammonia never even got to 1, .5 was my biggest "spike"

i picked up a dozen small hermits and a dozen snails 2 days ago to get things going clean-up crew wise. i'll be adding much more later on, i just had a little sticker shock at a potential $300 bill for tiny crabs and snails when i live so close to the ocean. this is going to be a semi-aggressive fowlr setup. the first fish i want to add is a small - medium lion, then a zebra eel a few weeks after that.

~Will.

 

some load, of course. Measurable or not... doubtful.

I went through the same curious concern as you are when my tank didn't seem to cycle according to what some people here said it should do. Similar to you I bought cured live rock and live sand.

On about the 3rd or 4th day in I added a pair of turbo snails, in hopes of "kick starting" something. Nothing really changed. I added a few pinches of Aquadine krill flakes, thinking THAT might affect something. A week later and nothing. So I added a peppermint shrimp, and 3 green chromis. Still, nothing changed, not even a mini spike. I was checking water 2x a day at that point.

I used a product called Stability for the first week and never saw my ammonia go above trace levels <0.1. What I've been told since is I just missed the spike. The nitrites did spike, to 0.20 after about 5-6 days. Nitrates followed suit for 2-3 days after that, spiking to 15. Since then my nitrates have been at detectable trace levels, but not close to the 10 units my test kit sets as the minimum. Last water check the nitrates didn't even register as trace.

I have since added a pair of ocellaris clowns and a larger CUC consisting of smaller snails and red leg hermits. Yeah, they fight a bit, but they rip across rocks pulling off algae like nothing I've ever seen in a FW tank, so we get along ok.

I am just over a month into this tank, water checks out fine every few days.

Despite the warnings not to add frags for 3-6 months I threw caution to the wind and took in some freebies. I have several kick-down frags added in the last 10 days or so doing quite well. My zoa frags are throwing off buds like they're ready to settle in, the mushroom has doubled in size from dime sized to quarter sized and is throwing off buds, and a "brown hairy stick" acro (my buddies GF's name for it, it's brown, and looks hairy) frag has gone from the verge of death to recovery mode. I see a new polyp or two stick out every day. In his tank it wasn't growing at all. The best success is the frog spawn. In a little over a week it's grown substantially and has 2 new heads that are starting to put off tentacles. I feed it every other day with a couple shrimp. It throws off flake, but likes the mysis.

-Doug

 

thanks very much for that personal experience!!

but i'm still unsure about that piece of fish i have in there . . . take it out or leave it in???

~Will.

 

take it out. It'll just make a mess of things.

 

lose the piece of fish, add live fish. Nice 150!

 

thanks for all the help, i took out the fish chunk earlier today. the tank itself is a 125 but i got a 17 gallon wet dry, and a 20 gallon fuge, so i figure 150 is a good round number for total volume.

am i correct in thinking its ok to add a single fish after the nitrites fall back to 0, as long as all my other levels stay undetectable? i just got my canopy finished and installed and now i'm dying to see a little more life in this thing.

~Will.